An English woman in New York

May 24

I discovered today that May 24 is a landmark date in New York history for two very important reasons.

In 1883, after 15 years of construction, the Brooklyn Bridge, the first suspension bridge to use steel rather than iron cables, and the first bridge across the East River, was finally opened. Wired describes the role of Emily Warren Roebling in supervising the bridge’s construction :

“By and by it was common gossip that hers was the great mind behind the great work and that this, the most monumental engineering triumph of the age, was actually the doing of a woman, which as a general proposition was taken in some quarters to be both preposterous and calamitous. In truth, she had by then a thorough grasp of the engineering involved.”